Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable housing

[Katie Henry (katie-henry]

FWIW, owner financing is alive and well in my home town of San Antonio, 
especially in the lower income, heavily Hispanic parts of town where houses 
sell for $50,000 or so. Buyers have citizenship issues or don't have 
conventional jobs or well-documented work histories, or even a bank account, 
but they can make the payments. Sellers have houses that are often double their 
original size with unpermitted additions and are sometimes in pretty rough 
shape, so mortgage companies won't provide financing. Homeowners sell by word 
of mouth or signs in the yard and in grocery stores. 



A lot of houses have been owned by the same family for generations. They never 
sell or move; they just pass it on to the kids. When they do sell, establishing 
clear title and finding survey markers can be a nightmare. 


It's not unusual for families to form compounds over the decades, where they 
end up owning all the houses on one side of a block or in a tight cluster in 
the same neighborhood. They have long-term agreements -- when Mrs. Hernandez 
dies, the family next door will buy the house for their younger daughter and 
her family.


None of this really applies to cohousing. I just think it's interesting. I've 
been spending time in this neighborhood for a couple years now, and it's 
fascinating to learn about this alternate economy.

Katie Henry





Sharon wrote:

One option would be for an individual to carry the mortgage when possible. In 
other words, allow people and not just banks to finance cohousing. I remember 
in the 1950s, my grandparents driving “out to the lake” to pay their mortgage 
payments. The previous owners had retired and moved to the small house they had 
built there with a fishing dock. The monthly income was more important to them 
than a bunch of money in the bank. The worst that could happen if my 
grandparents defaulted on the mortgage is that they would get their house back. 
This would reduce costs just in eliminating all the rigamarole that mortgage 
brokers and banks add to the process.